Young Avengers: Disassembled
by Kaiser Ryouga II
Summary: When Hulkling's injured, Wiccan loses control of his powers. Now as H.A.M.M.E.R begins to wonder if they have another Scarlet Witch on their hands, the YAs suspect foul play... Billy/Teddy, Kate/Eli/Rikki, Cassie/Vision, Tommy/Coat
1. Chapter 1

Author's Note: This is my first Young Avengers fanfiction but it's one I've wanted to do for a good while now. If you haven't already then I recommend you read Young Avengers: Dark Reign before you read this, otherwise some of the characters involved (Coat of Arms, Melter, Big Zero, Executioner, etc) will be unknown to you. The first chapter is Eli-centric (basically to set up the plot) then after chapter two the focus of the story will shift to Billy and Teddy. I encourage anyone who reads this story to give me their feedback, good or bad. Okay then! Here we go.

_Young Avengers: Disassembled_

**********

Part One

**********

McKesson Mini Golf Course; Upper East Side, New York City 

"The secret is timing, not aim. I can help you with that."

Maybe Billy's stance _was_ a little wonky in the knees there. Kate wondered if the problem was more form than anything else, but when Teddy's reliably stronger hands slipped down the length of Billy's arms and adjusted his grip, you couldn't help but think maybe he wanted it that way.

They were always a tender couple, but ever since Teddy first put that runic silver commitment ring on Billy's finger, they barely spent a second outside of each other's arms.

Teddy carefully peered over Billy's shoulder. They exchanged an adorable smile, so brief and slight you might mistake it as secretive, and threw their arms back together, Teddy' muscular warmth melting into Billy's own, before powering the putt through on one smooth swing. Their eyes followed the golf ball's trail up the steep three-yard mound, watched it circle in the air and fall toward the gaping jaw of a plastic hippo before sinking itself into the hole.

"Swish." Teddy grinned.

And he was rewarded with a quick kiss for his help.

"Thanks." Billy said. His hand slipped surreptitiously into Teddy's, where their fingers tenderly intermeshed into a warm whole, and with it, he led his beautiful boyfriend over to where Kate and Eli stood, waiting for their turn.

Eli, with his club suspended across his shoulders, quirked an eyebrow. "You guys do realize this is a competition, right? _Competition_? As in 'lets kick each other's butts'?"

Kate shrugged. "_I_ don't mind kicking your butt."

"Ha, ha."

"Oh _'Ha, ha'_, he deadpanned," quipped the archer, moving into position. Her technique needed no adjustments. She handled the club as fluidly as she would her battle staves, which was why when Kate went on to pause (mid-swing) it seemed a little peculiar. But she had an archer's eye, one of acuity and zeroed focus, perceptive enough to catch that slipstream burst of silvery motion whooshing past her and settling swiftly by the bench, as if he'd never left.

Tommy exhaled, four small shakes in hand. "You all owe me six bucks."

Eli took his own, then handed the other two to Billy and Teddy. "Thanks. It's hot as hell out here today."

Tommy shielded his eyes from the sun's crisp golden glare, just a few hours short of setting, with a cupped hand. "You know one of those X-Kids, what's her name, Pixie? She blogged about the Young Avengers last week. You know what she said? She said we're _dorks_. And what do we do to prove her wrong? Play mini-freaking-golf. Excelsior, kids, just excelsior."

Teddy masked a sigh. "You know, you didn't _have_ to come, Tommy."

"And screw up my nomination for the best fifth-wheel-of-a-double-date award? Not on your life."

"It's not a double date." Kate corrected. This time her stroke didn't fail her. It sunk the ball so swiftly it ruled out anyone teasing comeback out of her lead. She walked back to the bench as Eli, eyes rolled, advanced to the tee (or more specifically the little indented circle acting as one).

"Riiiiiiiiight," he sighed. "_Not_ a double date. Just a couple and a couple of friends. And _their_ friend."

Billy waxed in thought a moment as he leaned into the protective arm Teddy had curled around his shoulders. "I think maybe we should've invited Cassie, but-"

"But with her graduating to "real" Avenger status it'd feel like begging her back to the kiddie table?" Tommy proposed sardonically. "Yeah. But who could blame her? Who wouldn't wanna rub shoulders with Hank 'pimp hand' Pym?"

Kate took her shades off. "Okay, somebody's in a bad mood today. Do you miss her that much?"

They all watched Tommy bristle at the word "her". Kate didn't even need to bring up her name. Everyone knew who she meant, just like everyone had noticed how down in the dumps Tommy had been since that whole run in at the Invisible Mansion. They didn't want to press the speedster on it, thinking he only needed time to get over her, but the weeks were crunching on and Tommy still hadn't shaken the melancholy.

He swept a hand through his silvery bangs. He looked away. "I don't really want to talk about this."

Billy shrugged. "With a quick locator spell I could-"

"I said I don't want to talk about this. Lets just play, okay?"

"...Okay."

No one wanted to press him. In the end, however, they didn't need an excuse to change the subject it came when Eli, swinging back then forth in a stroke of sleek iron, clipped the plastic hippo's skull. Kate suppressed a victorious smirk watching the ball cycle through the air into a synthetic yellow hand.

"Jonas?" Eli retracted his golf club. "What are you doing here?"

He had materialized into the course so effortlessly no one noticed him leaning up against the lamp post marking off the gravel path toward the next hole. The Vision returned the errant ball to Eli's palm.

_"Hello, Eli. Kate, Tommy, Billy, Teddy. I apologize for interrupting your day, but I thought it best to speak with you in person."_

"Is something wrong?" Teddy asked.

_"Perhaps. Or it might be nothing, depending on your deliberation."_

"Jonas, could you be a dash less cryptic and a splash more descriptive?" Asked Kate.

The Vision nodded. _"Very well, Kate. Less than a few moments ago I detained a something as they attempted to sneak into the mansion. I thought you might like to know."_

Someone breaking into the ruins? It wasn't the first time, nor was it at all unsurprising; after all it _was_ the Avengers Mansion. There was a reason its rubble hadn't been swept away by some simpering city edict, but who else except themselves had any use for it now?

Kate turned to Eli. "Bad guy?"

"I don't know," he returned to The Vision. "Do you know who it is, Jonas?"

_"Unfortunately not. There is no record of this person in my encephalic cache. From what I can surmise this person appears to be an ordinary member of the public."_

Tommy tipped his head back with a protracted, irate groan. "Well you know what you've got, right? It's a looter. I'll bet he was probably stealing one of Mockingbird's old panties so he could sell 'um on EBay. Call the cops, let them deal with the guy."

_"I would not consider that the most salient course of action, Tommy."_

"And why not?"

_"Because this person asked for Eli."_

All eyes turned to the Bradley boy.

"Me? He wants to talk to me?"

Tommy blinked. "...You're friends with a panty-snatcher?"

Eli frowned. "Don't be stupid. What does this guy want with me? Did he say who he was?"

The Vision shook his head 'no'.

Kate approached him, more seriously this time. "Maybe we better deal with this, Eli. I can save schooling you guys for another Saturday."

**********

The (New) Invisible Mansion, ???

Her steps were slow, deliberate and surreptitious. So soft they were that the gravel had no click for her heels as she traversed the western wall of their hideout. As smoothly as things had progressed thus far, tracking down the last remaining bank transactions between her target and his dearly departed, she did not overstep the mark here. It was more than following orders. Her innate senses, sharpened to a wakizashi's tip, taught her that with patience always came the deserved kill. She would not overstep the mark.

She had learned the silent arts of assassination far too well.

With the last few seconds left until the next stage she tested the cable's integrity with a single tug. The lengthened black zip-line was terse with its effortless support of her weight, confirming the superiority of her supplied equipment. Secure in this knowledge she traced a few more footsteps down along the wall, each one as slight as a butterfly's wing beat, to take her down to his tightly shut window.

Thick iron bars secured it from within. She couldn't help but smirk at that, for why would someone secure a home that magic rendered invisible? Without the special infra-paranormal goggles she currently wore even _she_ might have overlooked the mansion. It lieu of that the security struck her as somewhat odd, yet she recalled the boy's file and thought better of her amusement.

What else might one expect from a committer of matricide if not paranoia?

Vibrations tickled the small bones of her ear. She bristled, still rather unused to many of the West's technologies, and attached her communicator to the cybernetic pod lodged within her ear. "_Moshi Moshi_."

(What? What does that mean?)

_Goddamn Americans_, she quipped in thought. "It is me. What is it?"

(Are you in position?)

"Indeed. Is my payment in order?"

(I told you, he arranged everything except my hiring you. Don't worry though, I've seen the numbers. You'll be paid through a Swiss account, I just can't tell you when.)

That struck her as idiotic but she did not forget who and _what_ she was talking too. The mental picture she suddenly had of her "employer" drew her smirk. She no longer chided herself for privately dubbing him "Sun Wukong".

"I trust you to keep your end of the bargain." She said.

(Thanks. He'll have your money, I promise. He's got everything under control; he even managed to get Mister Hyde in on this, this late in the game. And the good doctor was kind enough to get that monster ready for that other gang of super brats.)

She shuddered in unwanted remembrance of that creature he'd revealed to her beneath the lab all those weeks ago. Although she feared very little, that creature in all its gnashing teeth, bulk, and ferocious temperament sent a palpable chill down her spine.

She almost forgot he was speaking to her in memory of the beast. (Can you see him? Can you see the little rat bastard?)

With the cable holding steady off the roof's edge, she swung herself across to the boy's window and stole a quick glance. He was seated, surrounded on three sides by computer screens filled with data on mid-tier crime bosses and their many lowlife acolytes. His walls were adorned not with wallpaper or paint but rather wall-mounted maps of the city's vivid subway system and the territories presided over by the criminal underworld's most powerful forces. To these he stuck newspaper clippings about various criminal gangs (even defunct ones): everyone from the Yakuza and The Pride to the Triads and The Maggia. He even constructed makeshift "wanted" posters from the faces of their biggest names; Geoffrey Wilder, Count Nefaria, and to her great surprise, even the Kingpin.

"He would challenge the Kingpin?" She whispered. "What a fool this boy is!"

(Is he there?)

She told him 'yes'. The boy certainly was there. He sat somewhat angrily in the cushioned seat of a swivel chair with his gloved hands to his computer's black lettered keys. His skull mask dangled impotently from his door handle. She saw it twist suddenly when the boy with the Spider-Man shirt walked in.

The file she read in preparation for this mission identified him as Christopher, aka, Melter. The two boys exchanged words she could not hear from outside,

so she pulled a node from her ear pod and placed it against the window's cold glass. The sleek cord conjoining the two was no thicker than a few molecules but it allowed her to hear their conversation with so great a clarity it was as if she were there in the room with them, not cuddled to the wall outside.

(What's going on there?) Asked her employer.

She watched the two boys leave the room together. "They are making for their common room. This might be the best chance to catch them all off guard at once."

(Okay. Move into position. Just remember not to _kill_ the boy -- I'm saving that pleasure for myself.)

"Roger. Shutting off all communications."

She smirked, knowing the time was right to strike, and ascended the cable back to the rooftop. No one heard her footsteps, least of all Chris, whom had been so thoroughly shattered by the events at the old Invisible Mansion that he wondered if he might be imagining just how much of a mess they'd made of it, their shot, their chance at...

God. "Redemption" has such a backhanded ring to it...

"Hey," Danny eyed him over. "What the hell are you looking so beaten up about? I'm the one whose been getting death threats all week."

Chris paled at that. Amity was right to remind him a couple of days ago that drug cartels and crime bosses are always going to look for payback, it was just dumb logic, but that didn't stop him worrying about his team-mate, even if Patriot's warnings of "choice" wouldn't stop echoing in his skull.

Chris sighed. "We'll handle this, Danny, I promise. Did you find out anything else?"

"No. There's no goddamn leads and the encryption around my H.A.M.M.E.R. file was too dense to hack. I just barely got past their firewalls and security daemons. Who ever put the hit out on me is keeping their identity close to their chest."

"We'll handle this. Together."

Danny smirked. "You keep saying that like its your own ass on the line."

"That isn't what I think, it's just..." he pushed the lounge doors open. "All we have is each other now..."

Chris caught himself saying it the same moment he and Danny walked into a room full of the only people left into the world who could possibly understand him. Their only recourse -- each other.

Coat of Arms, dressed in her paint-stained overalls and gloves, sat quietly in her favourite armchair, throwing a pensive glance at their window. Amity reclined luxuriously into the sofa with a mint issue of _Storm Saxon_ and a lit cigarette drooping loosely from the corner of her mouth. Egghead's gigantic fingers kneaded the knots out of her shoulders as he regaled her with lofty tales of Kristallnacht and the Herero subjugation he downloaded into his databanks, all for her.

The table their room centred on was sparsely furnished by half-eaten boxes of pizza, lighters, Budweisers, cigarette butts and cookie crumbs.

The second Chris walked in Sylvie was at his side, wrapping him up tight her arms, giving him an early reminder of that sweet soft flesh he pressed himself into every night. Chris wasn't sure what he'd done to deserve a girl like Sylvie, but he thanked every god in Asgard for giving her to him. When they kissed he always felt like he could taste the magic on her lips.

"I hath miss-ith thee in all thy noble melancholy," She bit her lip. "Art thou angry-ith at me?"

He took her by her downy shoulders. "No! Of course not, Sylvie. It's not your fault I'm so... it just isn't about you. That's why I wanted us all to talk."

"Prithee, do!" She exclaimed, leading him to a chair. "Thy flaxen angel's heart hurts to see her gallant goodly warrior so sad-eth."

Danny flopped into an armchair of his own, threw his boots up on the table, and popped open a beer. "I think that's your cue to inspire us, Braveheart."

Jerk.

But there was a reason Chris gathered them all together like this, pulling Coat away from her art and all. "Look, we've just been dancing around all this since that whole thing with the Young Avengers-"

"We ARE the Young Avengers," Danny snapped. "And for all I know that Bishop girl is the one whose been sending me all these Ed Gein love letters."

Coat of Arms sighed. "Hawkeye wouldn't do that. Tommy wouldn't be friends with her if she were like that."

"Yeah man," Chris interjected. "Patriot said that's not how they do things. It's how _we_ do things, and... I'm just wondering if we might want to change that."

Amity sneered. "Oh, come on, Chris! You want us to turn soft and wimp out like those losers? The same losers that tried to break us all up?"

"Patriot said-"

"So... what? That black butthole says "jump" and you ask "how high"? Is that how it is? We've done more to clean up crime in this city these past couple weeks than they've done in like, forever. When are you gonna man-up and get your hands dirty?"

"Amity! Hush-ith thy barbed tongue!" Yelled Sylvie.

The teenaged supremacist shot a greying plume of smoke through her nostrils. "Sorry, Sylvie, I know he's your boyfriend and all but he's gotta strap on some balls and be a _leader_."

"I concur!" Said Egghead, cheerfully. "Was it not Nietzsche who warned us of gazing into the Void? Do we gaze and let evil's black tendrils sink into our souls? Oh, wait a minute. I speak of our counterparts... for 'we' are the Void. System error! System error! System error moment! Or perhaps the Void is heroism itself? Huh. Jew humour. I guess it wasn't a system error after all. Oh well. AH, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA!"

Coat frowned. "You're not helping, Egghead."

Amity waved him off. "Sorry. I think I overstressed his pleasure circuits last night. He won't shut up."

"Can we-ith not get-ith back-ith to the real problem at hand... ith?" Asked Sylvie.

Chris nodded. "Right. What do we all think? I guess Amity and Egghead, you guys aren't for it, but what about the rest of us? 'Cause right now we look less like the "Young Avengers" more like... the Young Masters of Evil or something. We have dreams, don't we?"

Coat of Arms perked a little, out of the quiet stupor she'd been wallowing in since Sylvie's teleportation spell whisked her away from both Tommy AND Norman Osborn. "Dreams?"

"Yeah. Dreams. Isn't that why we do this? You know... us as heroes?"

Danny sneered. "I _am_ a hero. I wipe the scum off the streets, even the ones closest to home. I don't need anyone's validation."

"Coat?"

She shrugged. "I'm sorry, Chris. I couldn't even define what the word 'hero' means anymore. Nor 'dreams'. If they're more than platitudes then no one is showing it."

"What about you Amity?"

She swilled from the neck of a cold beer. "What about me what?"

"Come on," Chris chided. "You don't do this for no reason. You have a dream too, right?

"Dreams? Well, aside from that one where I bitch slap Nelson Mandela, you wouldn't wanna know 'um."

Silence.

"What?" Shrugged the tattooed youth. "I hate it when people wreck a good thing."

Chris reclined into his chair fully spent. "This is hopeless."

"We do what we do to get the job done," said Danny, sternly. "We're the good guys, man. And if a few drug-pushing scumbags catch a bullet between the eyes every now and again then that's just the price they pay. Every omelette requires a few cracked eggs, right?"

"Hey!" Protested Egghead.

"Heh, heh, heh, heh. Sorry, Robot."

Chris leaned up again, falling to notice the subtle horned shadow that crept its way down the wall behind him. "Are you guys telling me that... _this_ is what you want us to be?"

"Beloved," Sylvie slipped two soft fingertips beneath Christopher's stubble-ridden chin and drew his eyes to hers. They were limpid pools of aquamarine seduction, churned for the beckoning. "Perhaps-ith if we art honest, then-"

Then...

An array of razor-sharp shuriken shattered the side window and circled across the lounge's breadth. It was so sudden not one of them could react to them in time. Danny was first hit, a blade slicing through the sleeve of his shirt and spitting his blood across the coffee table. Egghead could only move in time enough to shield Amity from them. They rained into his back like a torrent, each shuriken thrown with such a velocity so as to make him jerk.

"I am your Aegis!" He shouted.

Coat ducked desperately before one took off her head, and saw it shave chunks off her armchair before sinking with an ominous thud into her wall-mounted Green Goblin triptych.

Chris only saw a flash of Sylvie's blond as he rolled to the floor, ducking the rain of shuriken, and threw up his arms the second he could think. Across the room each shuriken shivered into a gelatinous goo, literally melting at his command, until the deadly weapons were little more than hot wet clumps of silver falling from the ceiling.

A second window was smashed before he had a chance to ask if "everyone was alright". A silhouetted figure somersaulted through it with twinned sai twirling in her hands. She leapt aggressively at Danny's flank, as if zeroed on him, just as he tucked a hand beneath his jacket, reaching hard for gunmetal. The seconds split into spattered flashes; the woman sweeping her elbow across Danny's face, a scream, the clap of a headbutt, thin steel hooked beneath the barrel at his trigger squeeze.

Coat's gloves clapped over her ears as a gunshot tore through the opposing lounge wall. Danny's pistol span into the air the very instant the attacker's heel struck a blow to his skull. He slumped unconscious to the ground, blood dribbling around his lips, while the heel reared up to crush his cranium...

...until a gigantic white fist roared monstrously across the room. The shadowed assassin vaulted over football-sized knuckles that barrelled into the far wall. Shockwaves rippled through the building, throwing Coat and Chris off their feet again, as clouds of dust spat debris about their heads. Yet the assassin merely danced up Amity's giant arm in a series of artistic somersaults until a flex of her hips hurled her knee into the girl's screen-sized left eye.

"OW!"

Amity in all her bulky mass toppled backward, splitting the coffee table in two while a powerful pair thighs encircled her tree trunk throat. Their grip was a vice, tight as the noose, choking her into a dizzy haze. With a single eye open (and the other one bruised) she saw the assassin toss aside both her sai and unsheathe a katana from her scabbard-strapped back with a foreboding metallic slurp.

At Amity's current size it looked like a toothpick -- but even a toothpick could pluck out someone's eye.

The Assassin grinned. "My race has an eye shape you like to mock, according to your file. How shall I shape _your_ eyes?"

While a breathless Amity squinted in horror she drew back her katana to strike, only to feel the weapon melt in her hand seconds before she made good. It was like ice cream softening into soup by the hot sun, running down her arm in syrupy rivulets.

The Assassin threw a sneer over her shoulder.

"Let Amity go!" Chris yelled. "Let her go or I swear I'll turn you into mulch!"

She sniggered while Amity's fantastically-sized eyes rolled into the back of her oversized skull. "You do not have the courage."

He didn't need it. Saying it gave Egghead just enough time to pounce. In the brusque next moment separating success from failure, the assassin bounced over Egghead's lunge and landed across the room behind one of the molten shuriken-stained armchairs.

Amity gasped in heavy, thankful breaths.

They were split into two halves now; Chris, Coat of Arms, an unconscious Danny, Egghead and Amity; across their freshly mangled lounge was the assassin herself. They knew next to nothing of her -- save for the familiarity of the crosshair-shaped print upon her skull.

"W-who are you?" Asked Coat.

She took up one of her discarded sai. "You children may call me... _Lady Bullseye_."

Chris's corrosive powers yearned at his fingertips for release. "What do you want from us?!"

"This was only a message. And the message... has been received." She stamped her authority upon the suggestion by flicking two small orbs between her free hand's fingers and . Chris and Coat both shielded their eyes when Lady Bullseye hurled them to the floor and a sheet of obtuse grey smoke puffed up from their broken shards.

It veiled Lady Bullseye inside itself. Then, when the smoke cloud was gone, _she_ was gone.

But she was not the only one...

"Sylvie?" Chris coughed on the smoke residue as he urgently siphoned through all the overturned furniture. "Sylvie? Sylvie! Sylvie, where are you?! Sylvie!"

Amity, restored to normal size with thick red welts around her throat, was helped to her feet by Egghead. "She isn't here?"

"No, no, no..." Chris rifled through the debris and lunged himself through the corridor. He went from room to room, overturning everything he could lift and melting anything he couldn't, until his search throughout the mansion took him back to where he started; the battered lounge.

Dazed, Chris sunk to his knees, eyes bugged out as if startled to his very core, his essence...

"I can't find her," was his haunted whisper. "So help me... I can't find her..."

**********

Skies of Fifth Avenue; Manhattan, New York City

In the back of his mind Eli couldn't shake a nagging voice with warnings that something was off. For a brief moment he reconsidered suiting up for this (as Vision had suggested on the way here) but he thought better of it. Whoever this guy was, he didn't need to know that he was Patriot "of the Young Avengers", assuming he didn't already. Such pre-emptive adjustments did little to put him at ease though.

"Hey."

It was Kate.

Eli found her at his side with a reassuring smile, but when he couldn't find the will to return it, he distracted himself with the H.A.M.M.E.R helicarrier, hovering ever lower since the recent "Asgardian terrorism" at Soldier's Field (but anyone who knew anything about Norman Osborn saw right through that cock-and-bull story) while they were ferried across New York City's sunset-laden skies by Billy's flight spell. It was a disk-shaped cluster of translucent magical energies, supplied by the magician's constant chant;

"_Iwanttotakeustotheruins_, _Iwanttotakeustotheruins_, _Iwanttotakeustotheruins_..."

Teddy was constantly at Billy's side, "hulked" out, shielding his boyfriend from the wind currents with a single wing, allowing him his concentration. The Vision glided peacefully beside them.

They were at the ruins within a fraction of the hour. As soon as the altitude was low enough, Eli and Kate leapt off the spell and landed together atop the uncut common grounds besieging the old mansion. Tommy was already there waiting for him.

"What took you guys so long?" He asked.

Vision led them across the courtyard. _"This way. I have the intruder in the medical assistance room."_

Somewhere in the Avenger's history Eli imagined Tony Stark being anal enough to create a titanium-laced wall around a secret underground infirmary, hard to break into and equally hard to escape from; which was probably why it doubled as a holding cell. There was something morbid about that.

The Vision took them through a side hatch that branched into a flight of stone steps. It was partially lit by overhanging light bulbs that ran on sparse samples of energy from the weakening back-up generators that survived the mansion's obliteration. The infirmary door waited for them at the bottom.

"We are here." Said the Vision.

Teddy regressed into his human form. "Are you sure we shouldn't be dressed for the occasion?"

"If this guy doesn't know I'm Patriot then I don't wanna give him any clues," Eli said. "Lets just get this over with."

Vision nudged the door open. And there he was. Sitting across the room, all its beds and medical equipment broken or overturned, his hands perched upon his head. He heaved in frustrated, ashy breaths until he saw the guy heading his welcoming committee. Eli wasn't as happy for the reunion though.

"Sean?"

It was him. The Bradley boy hadn't seen him in months but he knew it was him. Despite the five o'clock shadow and the haggard glint that his eyes barely masked, it was Sean. He had the same crooked smile and fingerless gloves as before.

"Eli!" He exclaimed, rushing up to him. "You don't know how much I-"

Teddy wearily shoved him back. "I think you'd better keep your distance."

"Who is this guy?" Kate asked.

The team leader winced. To think that after all this time it _still_ bugged him. No matter how many times the others said that they were over it he always succumbed to the shame. Eli glanced away, unable to look at her as he said, "This... is one of the guy's... who used to get me MGH. Mutant Growth Hormone..."

Tommy smirked. "This guy's your drug dealer?"

And then Eli gave him "the look" and...

"Okay... shutting up now."

Sean grinned. "Yeah, I used to hook our boy up. Then there was M-Day and all the stuff's dried up, except for dudes in the know. Who's got you now? I know it ain't no Bronx heads."

"I've got my grandpa's blood now," Eli punched the stone seal encrusting the wall's titanium innards -- just to prove the point. "Au naturel. Now give me one good reason why I shouldn't toss your sorry behind out of this mansion."

Then Sean's grin failed him. "...People are dying..."

"You just figured that out?"

"I ain't talking 'bout any goddamn drugs, Elijah. At least I don't think I am. There's this new stuff out there, cocaine mixed with MGH. They call it 'speedbang'. Makes you Magneto for a minute... at least in your head."

Eli sneered. "Then stop dealing."

"I'm not dealing anymore!" He yelled. "This ain't about the drugs! Every head on my block whose tried this crap is dead! And they ain't dead 'cause of the speedbang, they're dead because... something... ate them."

Billy blinked. "Ate them?"

"Yeah. Ate them. Like any a y'all would snack on your Mama's bacon."

"I'm Jewish, thanks."

He turned to Eli. "Come on, man. You gotta help us deal with this. I know we ain't boys or nothing, but... you're Patriot, right? Ain't this your job? Whacking tail? Just think of it as, like, a break between Galactus and Ultron."

"First of all," Tommy began. "If these nerds ever rocked with Galactus, they'd be too busy having a collective fangasm to fight back. Second of all, if there's something out there making lunch meat out of druggies then why don't you just call the cops?"

Sean grimaced at the notion. "Yeah, right. Seventeen heads dead and not one of them white. What cops you think gone help us? And unfortunately I ain't got Luke Cage on speed dial so I gotta ask you. Come on, Eli. You and your crew was whoopin' all kinds of ass when the Skrulls was here. Can't you handle this?"

"How do I know I can trust you?"

Thus The Vision interjected. _"His brainwaves, heart rate, lung patterns and pheromone displacement suggests he speaks the truth, Eli. I don't think it wise to overlook this."_

He wanted to think that that chapter of his life was a closed book, the shame of not being able to live up to his grandpa's legacy and turning to drugs to make it happen...

Kate was at his side again. Even beyond the security of her shades, Eli saw her concern for him. She was the most perceptive one among them. All it took was a touch, her fingertips' light graze across his trembling fist, and he was okay.

"All right," he said it more for Kate than Sean. "I'll help you."

**********


	2. Chapter 2

**********

Part Two

**********

Wakefield, Bronx; New York City

His shield's straps felt a little loose and probably needed adjustment when he got back to the mansion, but all in all everything seemed fine. Patriot glanced across the gleaming azure discus of Wiccan's transportation spell and assessed his team's integrity. Hawkeye, equipped with her bow, battle staves, sword and a full quiver, peered her sights over windy cityscape; the rolling flights of tenements, abandoned warehouses and empty shops. Above them (by a few feet) flew Vision and Hulking, who surveyed a greater panorama from that height.

Patriot called up to them. "Do you see anything suspicious?"

"_Negative."_ Proclaimed The Vision.

Hulkling shook his head 'no'.

_Damn it_, Patriot seethed. He didn't really want to follow Sean's directions to the letter (not with that nagging voice in his head warning him that something was _really_ strange about all of this) but they had to do this fast before any more people were hurt by whatever creature was on the loose out here.

What could it be?

Clearly it wasn't some wild dog or anything; animal control could've handled that. Even if it was, why would it focus its attacks on people drugged up on that cocaine/MGH cocktail? How long had it been around?

"What do you think we've got?" Hawkeye asked. "You think the Punisher got lost in the Andes at some point?"

A joke like that was her way of trying to cheer him up. Patriot shrugged a smile, more out of deference than amusement, and glanced over the spell's edge again. Speed streamlined through the streets below them as little more than blur of green and silver, dodging the odd car or truck down the asphalt. Since he hadn't reported anything suspicious to him Patriot could only assume he was following their lead.

The supersoldier sighed. "I don't know what this is, Hawkeye, and I can't shake this feeling I've got that something's not right."

"Such as?"

"I dunno. It's just a feeling."

Then Patriot watched Hawkeye pull that quiet, beautiful little smile of hers. "Well then un-feel it. We need our leader with a clear head, especially when we're a girl down."

Maybe that was what was bothering him -- not having Stature around. Things had been so dicey since the War; since her defection to Tony's side and her signing up for the Initiative. Now she was with Hank Pym's Avengers and unable to flit between the two teams as easily as Vision could.

Patriot shut his eyes and perched his gloved hands upon his hips. He heaved a meditative sigh. "She's always had our back when it counts, but..."

"Guys..." The magical blue glint flickered out of Wiccan's eyes. "We're here."

Right.

As soon as Wiccan brought their feet to the sidewalk (where Speed was already waiting for them) Patriot flagged down Hulking and Vision.

They stood before the dilapidated building Sean gave them the directions to. It was a crumbling old storage house barely clung together by its mortar. Each and every window was smashed into, fragments of the dirty glass still littering the sidewalk. Its shaky doors were barred by rain-rotted planks of wood. Its every wall had been tagged with spray paint. This place being abandoned for years made it a ripe homestead for pushers and users alike. Patriot caught himself sneering at the thought.

Hulkling drew back his beefy green fist. "How about we knock?"

"Wait a second," Patriot said. "Sean said there was a dealer hideout here. If we just bust in they might run away before I can question them."

"Sounds like your kind of job, Vision." Said Hawkeye.

"_Affirmative." _He expressed, before de-solidifying every atom in his body until he was but a ghost of himself. Vision phased through the rotting oak barriers sealing up the drug hovel and returned moments later to re-solidify.

"How does it look?"

"_Minimal photon signatures -- too dark to see. I detected no life signs and only a few residual traces of Mutant Growth Hormone. What lies beyond the lobby would require further analysis."_

Hawkeye shrugged. "All clear then?"

"_Indeed."_

Patriot smirked. "Okay, Hulkling. _Now_ you can knock."

A single hulked-out punch transformed the two doors and all the wooden planks obstructing them into splinters. A cloud of dust gusted across the darkened lobby, dragging the debris with it, as a pillar of late afternoon light filtered in through the doorway.

The Young Avengers entered.

The lobby, besieged by darkness, was almost empty. What remained of an old reception desk was overturned and split into two halves of itself. Elongated cracks traced themselves across the walls like wrinkles. Cobwebs infested almost every inch of the ceiling and its withered support beams. A cloak of thick brown dust covered everything.

Patriot took the lead. His boots shuffled through scattered piles of drug paraphernalia; needles and syringes, burnt spoons, abandoned doobies and torn shreds of cigarette paper. There was a blanket and a couple of old sleeping bags rolled up in the corner but nothing much else. Nothing really worth taking note of, anyway.

That was when Patriot noticed something odd about that old broken reception desk.

He brought himself over to it, kneeled, and ran his fingertips across three long and savagely cut trenches running through the desktop's grain. Judging by what he felt they were an inch deep and half as much wide.

Speed zoomed over to Patriot's side. "What've we got here?"

"I'm not sure. Wiccan, could you get us a little more light?"

"No problem." The young mage branched his arms, extending his staff, and surrounded himself in magical blue energies as he began to chant, _"Iwanttogiveusmorelight, Iwanttogiveusmorelight, Iwanttogiveusmorelight..."_

In literal seconds tiny balls of illumination, each one no bigger than a tennis ball, peppered the rafters and ceiling. Their combined light bathed the entire storehouse and all its rooms in a bright blue luminescence that was as efficient as any light bulb. Within this light Patriot saw in its entirely what his fingertips once felt. Those welts?

They were claw marks.

And they were even bigger in sight than they were to the touch.

"Whoa..." Speed ran his fingers along the indentations. "What kind of animal has claws this big?"

**"!"**

It came from beneath them.

Hawkeye drew back. "I'm guessing -- that kind."

"Uh... maybe we _should_ call Stature first..."

"There's no time," Patriot said firmly. He shirked the shield from his back, slipped his right arm into its thick leather straps, and stood. "If we don't stop this thing here it'll attack more people. Lets just do this thing and be done with it. Vision, take point."

The synthetic spectre answered _"affirmative"_ and wafted ahead of them in partial flight. From what intelligence his internal scanners provided (as they all knew) he had a better idea of the storehouse's layout than any of them. The Young Avengers followed The Vision's lead across the dusty lobby to an open side door, rusting at its hinges, at the room's rear. Beyond that lay a flight of stairs (as dirty and rundown as any other section of the building) that they climbed down.

At the end of the stairs was a basement door.

The lower they reached the louder those monstrous roars became, angry and furious, echoing up the stone steps; sending tiny but palpable chills down their otherwise resolute spines. By the time they reached the basement door, Vision and Patriot were side by side. The door before them was barred, much like the door upstairs (before Hulkling smashed it into kindling) and with the combined weight of their shoulders they shoved it open.

They found a horrific sight behind it.

Bones.

Puddles of them. Strewn across the floor, each fragment licked down to a snow white hue, the marrow sucked from them, leaving them hollow. Vertebrae and mandibles; fibulas and femurs; sternums and scapulas. The sheets of dust draping the floor were carved up into a grimy patchwork of footprints unknown to anything any of these courageous children had heretofore seen. And then, across the large and barren stone expanse of the storehouse's basement, stood their "prey".

A monstrous, silver-skinned hybrid animal; neither wolf, nor lizard, nor dog, nor lion, but some bestial mixture of them. With its gigantic tail thrashing behind it, and its prehensile claws gnashing at the ground beneath it, the creature opened its bloody jaws and expelled an ear-splitting shriek so loud and tumultuous that its vibrations rippled through the sea of bones it nested in.

Speed stepped back. "What the hell is that...?"

"_I have located a file in my encephalic cache. Scanning..."_ Vision began. _"This creature, I presume restructured from a former mutant compound - Cessily Kincaid aka 'Mercury' and Maximus Jenson aka 'Mammomax' - has been dubbed __**Predator X**__."_

"And what are we supposed to do?!"

"We take it down!" Patriot raised his shield. "...Avengers Assemble!"

**********

The (New) Invisible Mansion

"Well. What do we do now?"

Egghead made swift work of the mess. Under Amity's orders he brushed the glass shards, dust, broken beer bottles and melted drops of steel into a pile. He brushed that into a corner. All the while Amity lay back with a bag of frozen lima beans pressed around her neck. It didn't soothe her much but it was better than nothing.

Danny, vaguely teetering between the realms of conscious and unconscious, had a knot the size of a golf ball swelling out of his sweaty forehead. Coat peeled off his jacket and taped up the bloody gash along his arm while he slept. She just barely suppressed the instinct to commemorate their trouncing with a mural (as all her artistic instincts dictated) out of concern for her team-mates. Danny was wounded and Sylvie was gone -- and Chris was just barely coping.

With Danny's arm sealed tight Coat turned from him to Chris, who gaped dumbstruck through one of their broken windows. With his arm pressed up against the wall and his head softly banging it, over and over and over again, everyone saw how hard he was taking it.

She wondered how her beloved Green Goblin might handle this. Who would he kill or harass to get what he wanted? What example could they follow? But the will wouldn't find her. Coat of Arms reclined into one of their chairs (all of which Egghead put back in place) and exhaled miserably.

"So what do we do?"

Amity sneered. "Stop asking. I just wanna kill that damned oriental."

"Sylvie's been kidnapped, we have to do something."

There was a shuffle of fabric to their left. Coat and Amity turned to Chris, who pushed himself off the wall. They watched him scrub the wet out of his eyes as he went on to proclaim; "I know what we have to do."

"Yes?"

"We need the Young Avengers."

Amity sneered. "Oh, you've got to be kidding me! Them again? Haven't you been rejected enough, Chris? We can do this on our own."

"Can we?" Questioned Coat. "We lost Sylvie and we have no idea where she is. Without her, we can't teleport and the invisible mansion won't be so invisible by morning."

"And it's just a coincidence that you get to see the speed-freak again?"

A blush.

Then Chris angrily slapped his hand against what was left of their coffee table, drawing everyone's attention to him, even Danny, who stirred again at Coat's side. "I'm the leader, right? I make the call. Their magic guy, Wiccan. If we ask him, maybe he could find Sylvie for us. We don't need anything else from them, just a lead."

Danny, sharing Amity's contemptuous sneer, snorted at that. "You'd have us crawl back to those arrogant little schmucks with our tails between our legs? You'd have us begging for their help after what they did to us?"

"Well what happens if that Lady Bullseye woman comes back for us, huh?" Chris jabbed. "If we couldn't handle her with Sylvie what makes you think we could do it _without_ her?"

Silence.

That was a question Danny didn't have any answer to. So the young punisher frowned and returned his throbbing skull to the pillow fluffed beneath him. Chris knew from experience that Danny's silence meant his consent. Coat of Arms seemed to be with him too. That just left...

"Amity. How about it?"

She skulked at the question. But after a few moments of silence and frozen bean bag adjustments, Amity offered Chris her reply. "I don't like it, but if we don't have Sylvie then we lose our place, so I'll do it. Just this once."

"Okay," Chris breathed a sigh of relief. "Okay."

**********

Wakefield, Bronx; New York City

For all it's bulk, it showed no lack of agility.

The Young Avengers stood in awe when the creature known as Predator X leapt from its nesting area and crashed into the far wall. On its four legs it bounded along the circular wall, stringing a trail of massive claw prints in its wake, until its sweeping charge took it towards them. With a pluck of her terse bowstring Hawkeye sank an arrow into its hide. She and the others saw its arrowhead sink and coalesce into its silvery skin.

"It can absorb metals?"

Patriot glowered as its shadowed enlarged around them. "Avengers! Scatter!"

The Young Avengers all; Patriot, Hawkeye, Wiccan, Hulkling, Speed and Vision, all scattered in six different directions, just seconds before Predator X's enormous mass smashed into the ground where they once stood. It heaved its claws from the craters they created beneath themselves, and upon them, it galloped menacingly toward Speed.

The first lunge was like the hurl of a javelin, blood red claws as a sharp as a meat hook thrusting forth to snatch their breakneck prey. But if there was anyone among them faster than this monster, it was Speed. The predator pelted out a violent array of claw swipes and slashes but the silver-haired avenger danced effortlessly around each of them, so effortlessly it was as though he was anticipating the trajectory of swipes before they were even thrown. They were like two stuttering blurs, one reacting to the other's violently swift movements, but never connecting. Not even The Vision's superior optic capabilities could keep pace with them.

In the midst of all this Speed gave the beast an assortment of blurry smiles.

"You..." _Dodge_. "...can't..." _Duck_. "...touch..." _Dart_. "...me...!"

But he didn't notice the predator's spinal tail.

It encircled their duel of reflexes and crept towards his back. When Predator X leaned forward, Speed stepped back, and his ankle stumbled over it. He gasped. Speed toppled over into a puddle of bones. The hollow fragments had a morbid "crunch" as Predator X's titanic silver bulk loomed over him.

Speed shivered. "Oh boy..."

In the few seconds between the Predator's claws and Speed's evisceration -- Patriot dove shield-first into the monster's skull. Metal smacked metal with an impact like a thunderclap, stunning Predator X, if only briefly. It scuttled back to gather its senses.

"Get up, Speed!" Yelled Patriot. He unclipped three star-spangled shuriken to buy the speedster the necessary seconds. Patriot hurled them at Predator X's skull but like Hawkeye's arrowheads, the throwing stars merely melted into its thick metallic flesh.

It rose up from its inertia only to judder again when Hulkling landed atop its spiny back. His wings retracted into his shoulder blades while the shapeshifter grappled Predator X's muscular neck. It bucked and snarled and gnashed and roared, but Hulkling held his nerve, just until the predator reached back, took him by the shoulders, and hurled him away with one massive swing.

Wiccan blanched. "Teddy!"

But Hulkling's wings re-grew before he collided with the wall. Predator X boomed out a victorious roar but it did not follow up against Hulkling -- it charged at Wiccan. It galloped across the dusty basement on all fours as a magical blue aura returned to the mage's body.

"_Iwanttoslowitdown,"_ He chanted. _"Iwanttoslowitdown, Iwanttoslowitdown, Iwanttoslowitdown, Iwanttoslowitdown..."_

As the Young Avengers scrambled to Wiccan's side under Patriot's orders, Predator X's outrageous assault slowed by the millisecond into a geriatric's trawl. Mystical forces summoned by Wiccan's call channelled themselves into a nigh-invisible stream of energy that pinned Predator X into a sluggish crawl forward. No matter how hard it tried it could not move more than a step each second.

Sweat beads trickled down Wiccan's brow throughout the raw intensity of his concentration, but Hulkling was there by his side to will him to keep it up, to persevere, to buy them time.

Speed exhaled. "Is it just me or are we getting nowhere with this thing?"

Hawkeye nocked another arrow. "Maybe if I shoot its eye-"

They silenced themselves when The Vision fired off an energy blast that struck the predator square across the basement. It happened so suddenly the beast was thrown from its feet, quashing Wiccan's spell. It tumbled back into another mound of broken bones.

The Vision closed his palm. _"It would appear that this creature is vulnerable to energy-based assaults."_

"Any ideas on how we could use that?" Asked Hulkling.

"Wiccan and Vision are the only ones with that kind of power," Said Hawkeye. "It's up to you two."

"_Affirmative."_

Wiccan nodded. "I'll do my best."

Then Patriot stepped up. "All right then. Wiccan? Vision? On my signal, you guys blast the thing with every drop of juice you've got. Hawkeye, Speed, Hulking and I will buy you the time."

Speed grinned at the new course of action. "Sounds like a plan, man!"

"Okay! Lets go!"

Led by Patriot; Speed, Hulkling and Hawkeye threw themselves at Predator X, who burst up out of the bone pile Vision shot it into. The metallic tissue blown from its jawbones slowly reconstructed itself.

Hulkling was the first to strike by pounding its wound with all the raw force his knuckles could summon. The creature snarled in agony. When the shapeshifter vaulted out of the way Patriot lunged forward with an outstretched shield. It met the predator's wounded with the same echoing slap as before -- but this time the monster's reaction was instantaneous. It curled its claws into fists that rained blow after blow against Patriot's shield.

"Guys...!" He called out.

An arrow thunked the creature's jaw wound.

Predator X tossed his head back with a scream; a momentary window for Patriot to roll out of harm's way while the monstrous being picked the barbed missile out of its face. Its pain was too great for it to notice Speed running around and around and around it in a perfectly circular pattern. With each complete cycle he picked up a new level of speed until he had transformed himself into a ring of green and silver encircling the dazed monster. The sheer velocity of Speed's manoeuvre sent up a spinning column of wind -- one strong enough to carry Predator X up into the air.

It rolled around in the dusty tornado unable to thrash loose.

Until it opened its mouth.

The predator spat out a gelatinous wad of corrosive saliva that splattered over the slight gap between Hawkeye and the circle of motion imprisoning the monster within the tornado's whipping tongues. The sizzling splatter threw Speed off his momentum. He was literally tossed into the air by his own speed, and Predator X found a new target.

Hawkeye.

Patriot couldn't get there in time. Speed was barely conscious. They hadn't yet slowed it down enough to give Wiccan and Vision the time they needed to strike. The Predator vaulted into a pounce across the air and opened its massive ivory jaws. No one could get there in time...

"Kate! Look out!"

...except Hulkling.

Hawkeye, Patriot, Speed, Vision, and most of all Wiccan, gazed on in collective horror as Hulkling through himself between the archer and the beast, and the beast sunk its jagged teeth through his abdomen.

The shapeshifter's screams were bloodcurdling.

"No... Teddy!" Wiccan dropped his staff in shock. "TEDDY!"

Predator X ripped out chunks of pink and green tissue gobbled them up whole while an unconscious Hulkling fell into the dust. His eyes were wide open but he wasn't moving. Pulped meat slumped out of what was left of his ribcage.

Hawkeye, spattered in his blood, reached for him. "...T-Teddy...? Teddy...?"

He groaned.

His unearthly physiology was already beginning to compensate for the injuries that would have _killed_ any human earthling. Complicated threads of half-Skrull DNA rewove themselves into full vitality. Slowly but surely Hulkling's wounds healed themselves.

But Wiccan was too far away to see it.

All could see was the love of his life, Teddy Altman, lying inert in a pool of his own blood; while meaty pieces of him sunk into the stomach of Predator X. His commitment ring felt warm around his finger.

It even had a glow.

Vision, who turned to the sorcerer with concern, said something. Wiccan saw his lips move but failed to register any of the words. It didn't matter. There was only the heart in his chest, pounding like drumbeats, filled with a distant but visceral ache. And anger.

So much anger.

All eyes turned to him as a crack of thunder, as deafening and turbulent as anything Thor might summon, sent rumbles through the basement's very foundations. Cracks formed throughout its circular walls and dust poured from them like rivers. Tiny streaks of lightning danced across floor and snaked up to Wiccan's fists as the pupils rolled out of his eyes, transforming them into blank white sheets of malevolent intent. The ground quivered beneath his feet. His powers rumbled the room to so great an extent that no one except The Vision noticed the arrival of H.A.M.M.E.R. agents through the basement door.

"_Iwanttokillit..."_ An entranced Wiccan muttered. _"Iwanttokillit, Iwanttokillit, Iwanttokillit, Iwanttokillit..."_

Lightning surged out from his fingertips. Twisting tongues of electrical force stormed across the divide and battered Predator X. Savage bolts climbed down its jaws even as it roared in pain. Hunks of metal skin were blown off his body even as wounded flesh tore itself open internally. The predator was swallowed completely by Wiccan's lightning. Nothing could be seen of it beyond the intense blue light. Nothing was heard beyond this vicious crackle -- until that power exploded.

And Predator X was blown into thousands of tiny silver-coloured wall smudges.

The shockwave threw everyone, Young Avengers and H.A.M.M.E.R. agents, onto their backs. Clouds of dust and streaks of lightning obscured their sights. The only perceptible phenomenon was the crystalline blue orb throbbing in the centre of the chaos. Wiccan's raw, unfiltered power.

"B-Billy!" Patriot coughed through the dust clouds. "Billy, stop! It's over!"

But he did not hear it.

Wiccan _could not _hear it because it wasn't really him anymore. Rather, it was the sheer mystical potency that lived beneath his conscious restraint, now fully unleashed.

In the midst of all this thunder and light and lightning, Hulkling stirred, finally with enough strength to open his eyes. He coughed. "W-what is...?"

Hawkeye brought him into her arms. She thumbed the tears out of her eyes. "It's okay," she said. "You're okay..."

Then her archer's eye caught a sliver of motion shooting toward the orb. As the other Young Avengers gathered around her they all witnessed the power sphere collapse. Light shattered like glass into tiny fragmented sparkles that lingered where they fell. It was beautiful, in its own way. Wiccan collapsed there, first to his knees then to his stomach. A dart-shaped syringe protruded from his neck.

Hulkling coughed. "B-Billy...!"

H.A.M.M.E.R. agents, each of them armed with assault-level laser carbines, surrounded them. One of the agents smirked. "Calm down. It's just a tranquiliser round. Now. Time to start talking, kids..."

**********

Afterthoughts

* Does anybody, anywhere, like the Young Masters? Seems like a lot of YA fans hate their guts, which I suppose is, in its own way, understandable. _Melter's_ a milquetoast leader who accidentally killed his own parents and an old lady, _Coat of Arms_ is a lil' bit crazy, _Enchantress_ put the moves on Billy, _Executioner_ blackmailed Kate and killed his own Mom, and _Big Zero_ and _Egghead_ are both racists. But as nasty as they all are, I think they make great villains for the Young Avengers. Every good superhero needs a great supervillain, and I think the Young Masters fulfil that role pretty well.

* If I didn't say so before, this fanfic takes place just before Siege.


	3. Chapter 3

**********

Part Three

**********

Mount Sinai Hospital, Manhattan, NYC

"Look guys, he's coming to."

His eyes blinked open. At first he saw a bright white light that made him worry out the moment, but then his eyes adjusted and the light transformed into a ceiling-lodged lamp.

Two thin arms circled his shoulders to fluff the pillow underneath them. He glanced up and saw Kate, barely holding back her tears, smiling at him. Eli stood beside her with grocery bag full of grapes, magazines, and chocolate. Tommy waited idly by the windowsill (with nothing else but sterile white-painted walls to occupy his limited attention span) but he perked up a slice seeing him awaken.

"Teddy?" Kate whispered. "How do you feel?"

He pulled a grudging smile. "...Like I just went... six rounds... with the Silver Surfer..."

It wasn't a lie either. This was not the first time Teddy had regenerated a wound but it was certainly the first time he had regenerated from a _mortal one_. If not for the Skrull genes permeating his body he would've been killed.

Teddy smiled a bit to himself. After the Skrull invasion there was so much anti-Skrull feeling in the world. Just going to school you heard kids cracking wise about their toughest teachers being "one of them". At the time he tried not to let it get to him, but it did. It was times like these that reminded him how lucky he was to have Skrull blood running through his veins.

"Thanks, Mom..." He whispered.

Eli took Teddy by the shoulder. "Hey. We were worried about you."

"How long... have I... been OOA?"

"About two days now, if you can believe it."

"Is Billy... all right?"

The mood between them all soured at the mention of his name. Teddy took that as a resounding "no". He forced himself upright with a weakened grunt, newly conscious of the fact that the boy he loved wasn't by his side, where he _aught_ to be.

"What happened to Billy?" Barked Teddy. "Tell me... what happened..."

Kate pushed his shoulder back down to the groaning hospital bed. "Don't push yourself just yet. You still need to rest."

"I've been asleep.... for _two days_. Where's Billy?"

Then Tommy came to his bedside with a stool from the corner. He exhaled. "Dude, we think he's fine."

"...You think?"

The speedster shrugged. "H.A.M.M.E.R's got him."

"What?!"

Eli, his expression stern and solemn now, explained it all. "After that Predator X thing bit you, Billy went loco. He smashed the sucker to pieces, but... H.A.M.M.E.R agents were all over us before we could get to him."

"They had meters and gadgets that'd give Reed Richards a heart palpitation." Kate said. "They said that the spectral resonance of Billy's energy read off the scale."

That was no surprise. Teddy recalled one late night cram session where Billy mentioned a little chitchat between him and Doctor Strange, THE Doctor Strange, when he lost the title of _Sorcerer Supreme_ and the _Eye of Agamotto_ required a new bearer. In the end that honour was bequeathed to Brother Voodoo, not Billy, but what did it say about him that he was even **considered** for something like that? To be held in the same league as Doctor Doom, or The Hood, or Steven Strange himself?

Kate brought Teddy's thoughts back to the moment when he drifted. "He'll be okay, I promise."

"Where is Billy now?"

Eli shut his eyes. "They took him to the H.A.M.M.E.R helicarrier."

"And you're all just standing here?!" Teddy grit his teeth, rising, tearing off his IV. "Goddamnit!"

Though it hurt like hell Teddy shrugged himself off the gurney. Kate moved to stop him but he pushed on until a searing hot pain tore up his ribcage. Teddy cried out in agony as his whole body, from his temples to his toes, seized up. He toppled forward. Luckily Eli's arms were there to catch him before his face met the hospital floor's tiles. The supersoldier lugged Teddy back to the bed while Kate reattached his IV.

"You aren't going anywhere," Eli commanded. "They've already got one of my friends, they aren't gonna get another one."

"So... that's your plan...?!" Teddy quipped through the pain. "Just... leave him there...?!"

"We have to figure out what we're up against first."

But didn't he say that Billy destroyed Predator X? When Teddy tiredly wiped the sweat from his brow and asked Eli what he meant by that, Kate took a copy of the _New York Post_ from the grocery bag. She folded it to the front page and passed it into Teddy's hands. The headline read;

OOC MUTANT APPREHENDED IN DRUG-RELATED RAMPAGE.

Teddy blanched. "The Press knows about this?"

And at that Kate nodded. "Complete with spin. Nobody was hurt but they're framing this like it could've been another Stamford. H.A.M.M.E.R haven't released Billy's name or identity since he isn't eighteen yet, but they want to detain him so they can assess his 'threat' level. We're just lucky Billy's parents are out of town."

"I don't believe this..."

"Believe it, dude," Tommy said. "So where'd you get the ring?"

"What?"

Tommy made a 'hoop' gesture around one of his fingers. "That commitment ring you bought my little brother, remember? Where'd you get it?"

Teddy sneered. "What the hell does THAT have to do with anything?"

"It was glowing when Billy went nuts."

"What?"

The speedster pointed at Kate. "She saw it, not me."

And so Teddy swayed to the other side of the bed where Kate stood. Nodding, she folded up the newspaper and left the grocery bag by his bedside table. "Jonas noticed it too but he was quick enough to snatch it from Billy's finger before H.A.M.M.E.R gave us the interrogational treatment. He's analysing it at the mansion right now. It's just a hunch I've got, but..."

"You think-" Teddy grunted when another wad of pain throbbed at his lower ribcage. He cuddled himself to relieve it even as he kept on with the conversation. "You think the ring had something to do with him losing control of his powers?"

"Exactly. And don't you think it's a little bit convenient that H.A.M.M.E.R just happened to show up seconds before Billy went ape-crap and blew that thing to kingdom come?"

"It was a set-up?"

Tommy shrugged. "That's what Kate thinks. But even if it was a set-up, who could we complain to? Nick Fury, Maria Hill, S.H.I.E.L.D? Cap and the Avengers? They're all gone."

Now that the weight and gravity of the problem was fully revealed to him, it all seemed so hopeless. Teddy threw his face into his palm and sighed. He cursed himself for not being healthy enough to save Billy. "What are we going to-?"

The door clicked open.

Teddy, Eli, Kate and Tommy all glanced in that direction; hunching as if ready for trouble, but a pony-tailed blonde cloaked in a deep brown jacket jogged across the room and threw her arms around the injured prince. They all relaxed from seeing her -- all except Tommy.

"Teddy! I came as soon as I heard!" She cried. "Are you okay?"

The boy smiled warmly, hugging her back as best as he could. "I'm fine, Cass, I'm fine. I think. Could use a few painkillers, though."

Cassie scrubbed the tears out of her eyes. "Thank goodness..."

"Well, well, well..." Tommy frowned at the sudden addition to their group as she unpeeled herself from Teddy's waist. "Look who finally decided to grace us with her mighty avenging presence."

"Look Tommy, I know I haven't been around much-"

"_Much_? Try "at all"! I mean, where were you, Cassie? Where were you when your buddies were being half-eaten by monsters and kidnapped by H.A.M.M.E.R?"

Cassie frowned. "I've been busy, yes, but I still care about my friends. I'm _still_ a Young Avenger."

"Well you've got a funny way of showing it."

That stung her a little. Teddy saw her remorse, felt the earnestness of it, but even he couldn't deny that having Stature at their side from the beginning would have helped. He knew that Kate and Eli felt the same way as well. Though their shared expression said they disproved of Tommy blurting it out like that, it didn't hide that little twinge of agreement.

"Tommy-" Kate sighed. "This isn't the time or the place."

"No. I think it is. I think I'm curious. Where was she?" He and Cassie locked eyes. "And why are you here now? What happened? It get lonely all the way up there in the major leagues?"

"Getting mad at me won't bring Billy back, Tommy."

His lips curled into an angry smile. "Yeah. H.A.M.M.E.R's got him. A bunch of jackasses trying to control everybody. Sound familiar?"

Cassie's eyes sharpened. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Tony Stark. Didn't he think he could control everything too? Isn't that why you took his side?"

"Oh my God, are you kidding me with this?" Yelled the blonde. "Are you serious? I made a choice and it's over, Tommy! The Civil War is over!"

"And Captain America's still **dead** because of it."

"That's not fair!"

"Knock it off!" Yelled Eli. "I know we're all upset but taking it out on each other isn't going to help anybody and it's definitely not gonna help Billy! We don't have Cap or Iron Man or Jessica Jones to bail us out on this one. All we have is each other -- we're a family."

Both of them, Cassie and Tommy, cooled off after that one. Cassie slinked over to Kate's side where the archer drew her into a warm hug (a deferred hello) while Tommy took himself over to the windowsill and sat back down.

Teddy broke the ensuing silence. "So what now?"

"We save Billy," Kate said. "Whatever it takes. The instant Vision completes the analysis we'll track down whoever sold you the ring and get the truth out of them, then force H.A.M.M.E.R's hand. And if they don't play ball then we'll get Billy out ourselves -- we just have to figure out how. But for now..." Kate then pulled Teddy's blankets back over him. "You better to get rested."

He didn't want to sleep and no one blamed him. How could _anyone_ sleep when their boyfriend had been detained by a bunch of criminal nutjobs dressing up as S.H.I.E.L.D? At first Teddy couldn't sleep at all. It took a nurse coming by with some antibiotics and a glass of water to get him there. Throughout the subsequent minutes Kate, Eli, Tommy and Cassie watch him drift off into the best restless slumber medication could offer.

Tommy waved his hand over Teddy's face. "He's out cold."

"Good." Kate said. "Because I'm worried about him, and for more than one reason."

Cassie asked her to explain.

"He isn't registered. If one of these physicians figure out that Teddy has powers, we'll have more H.A.M.M.E.R agents on our case. It's not just that either. Someone needs to be here in case he tries something stupid."

"Like breaking Billy out of the helicarrier all by himself?" Cassie asked.

"Bingo."

Eli held his chin. "Damn. I didn't think about that. But we're undermanned as it is. We can't spare anyone else."

"Wanna break someone else out of juvie?" Tommy grinned. "I've got a couple buddies on lockdown."

But they didn't need to resort to _that_ again. Before anyone knew it Eli fished a cell phone out of his denims and hit up a number. It rang.

"Who are you calling?" Asked Kate.

"The only person I trust to stand up to Teddy if worst comes to worst," He paused a moment then spoke; "Hey, Rikki? It's Eli. I need a _really_ big favour..."

**********

The (New) Invisible Mansion 

It took two whole days before Executioner felt well enough to travel again. The gash to his arm hadn't fully healed (and without Enchantress around there was no mystic mojo to sow it up either) but his mother's money hadn't just paid for marksmanship lessons at the Hawthorn Academy. He knew his way around a first aid kid and was proficient in all manner of survival tactics. With a needle, antiseptic and some stolen surgical thread, he sowed stitches into himself. It was as though he spent most of his time working in a hospital rather than sending people there -- if they were lucky (the not-so-lucky could always be found in the obituaries).

Once he was patched up and brimming with renewed vitality and purpose, the Executioner strapped on his skull-mask and came packing heat. His Barrett M82A1 sniper rifle, his Desert Eagle (.357 magnum cartridge), his M1911 (.45 ACP cartridge), his twinned Mossberg 500s (12 and 20 gauge respectively) and his replica Mauser C96: the "Broomhandle" (a little old school, but it was a trademark of his).

Big Zero spent most of Executioner's downtime prepping Egghead for what was to come. There had been numerous faults in his logic drive, and from time to time he continued to commit nauseating acts of political correctness in his speech patterns (a little kink she was having trouble wiping from his existence) but she had fun reprogramming his bio-molecular manipulation tactics.

Coat of Arms tried to take Enchantress's predicament off her mind, ironically by painting her. She crafted her finest full body portrait; her friend Sylvie rendered in twain. A line ran through Enchantress's body. To its left she stood in all her glory; flaxen braided locks and fair-skinned, while to its right all such hair and meat had been stripped from her bones; the simplest duality she could think of. To the left Coat had emblazed the piece **"Seduction" **and to the right _"Innocence"_.

Executioner didn't get it.

While his team prepared for the trip, Melter spent most of his time alone in the room he shared with his girl. Her scent still clung to everything; her sterling silver hairbrush still had wisps of gold tangled in its teeth. Melter shivered himself to sleep those nights, still tasting her essence around him but never able to touch that sweet soft skin...

The morning they were set to leave Melter caught himself running the Enchantress's silky white camisole under his nose. It still had her fragrance, sort of like, apples mixed with cinnamon almost. He would've cried if someone didn't knock his door.

"Melter?"

It was Coat of Arms. He knew her voice. The young leader quickly stuffed Sylvie's camisole underneath their mattress and opened the door. Indeed the artist stood there waiting for him fully dressed in Tiboro's coat. All six of her arms were crossed together. She appeared focused. "Are you ready to go?"

"As I'll ever be," Melter searched her six hands. "Aren't you gonna bring your camcorder?"

Coat of Arms pulled a gentle smile at that. "I don't think I could focus on a 'scene' right now. My mind's occupying too many dimensions, so many that I can't even appreciate the irony of it."

He didn't know what say except; "Will you be okay?"

"I'm more worried about you, Chris."

Melter sighed.

"Can you face him?" Asked Coat, frowning. "Can you face Patriot again without having made your choice?"

"Do I _have_ a choice?"

"I'm not existentialism's biggest proponent but I'd say you do."

And Melter heaved another sigh. "It doesn't matter right now. I can't be worried about that. All I care about is getting Sylvie back."

Nobody ever seemed to know what Coat of Arms was thinking. Everyone among their group all thought of her as a little bit crazy, but she was _their_ crazy. Yet at times she had a cold and creepy kind of stare; as though she had an insight into whom you really were, with free reign to seep beneath the surface of your airs and graces, and pluck out the gasping id.

When Coat of Arms stared at Melter like that he felt naked. Not _sweating beneath Sylvie's smoking hot body_ naked, but _bloodily snatched from his Mom's hips_ naked. It was disarming, and it didn't go away until Coat of Arms turned heel, muttered, "Perhaps that's your answer" under her breath, and strode off down the hall.

He breathed out another sigh.

Melter followed her lead to the foyer where The Executioner, Big Zero and Egghead were waiting for them. Together the Young Masters left the new Invisible Mansion and traversed its surrounds, Crotona Park, to which they had relocated after the dust-up with the Young Avengers in Central Park. Without the Enchantress they needed wheels to get to Manhattan, so they headed off to the junction where Crotona Avenue met Boston Road and carjacked the first poor sap that came by with a five-seater.

While Executioner's boot stomped the accelerator, Egghead stuck his skull through the window and chuckled at the car's owner, lying unconscious in the asphalt. **"Dude! Where's your Car?"**

They drove off, wheels screeching into the distance.

What the Young Masters did not notice was a feminine shadow-cloaked figure keeping pace with the Range Rover, stalking them from building to building and rooftop to rooftop, even as it reared up on the main street. Through the pod in her ear her employer warned her not to engage them again just yet. And that was fine.

Lady Bullseye would simply follow them to wherever they were headed.

**********

H.A.M.M.E.R. Helicarrier, Staten Island Airspace, New York City 

He was simple folk by estimation. He had little Polaroids of his family, his wife and his three girls, framed for his work area. He had his feet up on the panel with a lukewarm cup of java in one hand and a half-eaten donut in the other. Cinnamon dust stained his smock.

The trickster considered him simple and easy to manipulate.

"Hey," said the trickster to his partner. "Isn't your shift over?"

The suburbanite clocked his watch. "I don't think so."

"Sure it is. Didn't I tell you before? Miss Hand switched the timetables up after her last fly-by. Surely I must have told you?"

He appeared sceptical but enthused by the lie. He paused to dunk his donut into his coffee then cast a glance beyond the pane of bulletproof wares above the computer panel.

"But we've got the new acquisition in there. You think you could hold down the fort for me?"

Interesting. The trickster had hoped for a reason to prolong the deception, as he so enjoyed the sport, but alas, it was not to be. Instead he pulled a cool smile and said, "I've got you covered", excuse enough for the suburbanite to dump his surveillance paperwork where they were and slink back to his quarters. The automatic door slid open and shut. Silence again. And then...

"Heh, heh, heh," cackled the trickster. "This Midgardians are so pitifully easy to manipulate."

His form, possessed of the miserably ashen worker's smock that so matched the miserably ashen walls surrounding him, melted into the refinery of cloaks, hauberks and pelts; into the curving golden horns of his helmet.

It so delighted Loki to be returned to his natural form that he paused to take pleasure in the full extent of his true senses, the many blessings his Godhood; a sight beyond sight, the scent of every molecule the air had to offer, and the taste of a new deception waiting in the wings.

Donning the guise of a mortal meant momentarily lapsing into a lower form of living, of assuming their trivial concerns and sensibilities, and to be _restored_ was as great a joy as the deceptions that preceded it.

Loki snapped his fingers.

Light shimmered up his figure and transported him from the observation deck to the cells, where his young spoil of war lay strapped and inert. The boy had been stripped of his false Asgardian wears, his staff and his consciousness, upon arrival. He now lay sleeping across the steel table centring his empty white cell.

Billy Kaplan, his "parents" had called him.

Loki dragged his fingers across the boy's cheek and pulled away magical essence as dense and thick as syrup. He plunged his finger into his mouth and sampled that essence for himself. It plucked up his grin.

"Ah..." He whispered. "The irrefutable taste of _true power_. You are a delight, progeny of Maximoff. Now it is time to divine your usefulness."

The trickster snapped his fingers again and a second table materialized beside the boy's. It also had a young mage strapped to its cold metals, but unlike the boy, this girl was his own creation.

Sylvie.

It was not Loki's intention for her to assume the mantle of Enchantress, but she wore the garment of seductress well -- and now he had a use for such a talent. He brought himself between the two tables to touch the sleeping mages by both their foreheads. His fingertips began to glow with magic, a cruel magic that dripped into the suspended consciousnesses of both Billy and Sylvie, into the one realm where everyone is truly alone.

The mind.

But they would be alone no longer...

"What is it you Midgardian younglings say? Relax?" Loki grinned. "Do so. Relax. Let Loki work his mysticism and just... relax..."

**********

_???_

_You know, somewhere in the back of my head, I don't think I believe in out of body experiences. _

_So why do I feel like I'm having one?_

_It looked (the keyword being __**looked**__) like a normal day. I woke up and my fan was still on, keeping me cool throughout the night (because I hate to be sweaty in the morning). My room was still a mess after my little brothers barged in and trashed it hunting down one of my Blu-rays. Unwritten homework burned a hole in my backpack. Unanswered e-mails languished in a Google mail account, waiting for me to open them. _

_Everything looked normal. _

_Except it wasn't._

_I couldn't... really define what was wrong. It was like recognizing someone's face on a TV show but not being able to place their name or how you knew them. But you know you know. _

_Maybe I was just worn out. _

_Settling for that, I threw a shirt and some pants on then padded out of my bedroom and into the bathroom. And you know, I took a shower. I brushed my teeth and ran a comb through my hair. It was everything I would normally do. I stepped out of the bathroom after that and then I smelt bacon._

_Bacon._

_I knew the smell. It slapped me silly every time I cycled by a deli. There was nothing weird about bacon -- but why did I get this nagging feeling that that just wasn't right? The smell of bacon in my house?_

"_Billy!" _

_That was my Mom's voice, wasn't it?_

"_Billy?" She called up to me. "Billy, aren't you awake yet? You have a guest!"_

_A guest?_

_I felt myself pause mid-step as a string of images, beautiful little snapshots, fluttered through my head. I saw ocean blue eyes and cropped golden hair; I saw sun-kissed muscles and a smile so sweet it'd make your toes curl. And all of a sudden I couldn't __**wait**__ to get downstairs. _

_I ran like my life depended on it, even as my nose wiggled at the uncanny stink of fried pork, until my feet skidded to a stop in the kitchen, but whoever I just pictured wasn't there to meet me. _

_My Mom sat at the head of the dining table with a plate of eggs, hash browns and bacon (which was increasingly starting to freak me out) in front of her. In her free hand she'd cracked open today's copy of __**The Oklahoman**__ and had a special smile for the headline. _

_YOUNG AVENGERS CAPTURED AND UNMASKED IN LOS ANGELES. _

"_Young Avengers...?" I caught myself whispering. _

_There was someone else too, someone who looked familiar, but uncannily so, you know? My 'guest'. She was a little blonde girl and not who I expected. It wasn't him. I could almost taste the disappointment in my mouth -- sort of chalky. _

_Then she hugged me. _

"_Morning, Sleepyhead!" She said. "What got you so tired?"_

_Who was she?_

"_Uh..."_

"_Never mind," Then for some reason, whatever reason, she rested her head against my chest and it made me uncomfortable. __**Very**__ uncomfortable. She didn't seem to notice me squirming though. What were we to each other?_

_I saw a pendant dangling from her neck, the kind you catch half-naked dancers wearing in rap videos. It was like a thunderbolt-shaped wedge of gold and it had a name engraved in it. The name was Sylvie. _

"_...Sylvie?"_

_The blonde girl smiled at me. "That's my name and don't wear it out 'cause I need it for tomorrow!" She giggled impishly again. "You just better be ready for school now. I've got cheerleader tryouts today, remember?"_

"_Do you have a bike?" I asked._

_She shrugged. "No. Why?"_

"_Well I always cycle to the Flatiron District, so-"_

"_Flatiron District?" My Mom chuckled at me. "Son, what kind of dream were you having? It'll take a lot of peddling to get to New York from here."_

"_This... isn't New York...?"_

_Sylvie smirked. "Not quite, Billy. Try Broxton, Oklahoma."_

"_...Broxton?"_

_Okay. Something is REALLY not right here..._

**********

Afterthoughts

* Somewhere in this chapter Tommy says that Captain America is "dead". If you've been following the Marvel Universe recently then you'll know that he wasn't actually _killed_, but since this fanfic takes place before Siege (and the Young Avengers don't find out that Cap is alive until at least Siege #2) I'm working under the assumption that they still think Captain America is dead.

* I hit up Wikipedia and a few other websites to identify what guns the Executioner uses, judging by his artwork, but I could only confirm one (the Mauser C96). The rest are just guesswork. As far as I know he doesn't use a Desert Eagle, but it's a cool weapon so I thought I'd just chuck that in there.


	4. Chapter 4

**********

Part Four

**********

Mount Sinai Hospital, Manhattan, NYC

Just a girl without a world...

And when she wasn't tangling with the zombificated high school students and quelling ideological riots, she was playing clean up for her buddies' heroism.

*Sigh*, and stuff.

Rikki shoved a hand into her jeans and withdrew a dollar bill. She glanced down both lengths of the hall then checked Teddy's door. Nobody, neither nurse nor physician, was coming. So she slipped the note into the coffee machine and had it squirt out the hot lava this world called as "coffee". There was no cream left and she could've murdered some biscotti, but right now this would have to do, and when the foam cup was full Rikki sipped from it with a prolonged sigh. She pressed her back against the wall.

People passed her by from time to time; patients in smocks getting some motion back into their legs; distraught visitors come to see sick relatives; surgeons up for a chat with the sickies they were next scheduled to slice and dice. All those artificial smiles were fooling no one. She always found hospitals depressing, no matter how much good they did or now necessary they were, so she wasn't really enjoying this gig, but out of deference to Eli, Rikki didn't plan on complaining.

Besides. The last time she needed _his_ help he was there for her, he and the Young Avengers all, Teddy included. She never could've handled the Desmond Daniels business without them.

What _really_ bugged Rikki was Eli not calling her earlier.

Why on earth would he throw himself against that "Predator X" thing Teddy was telling her about when his team was a girl short?

With John gone, the Young Avengers were the closest friends Rikki had in this world that wasn't really her own, and seeing them in such disarray impelled her to help, even if Eli brain-drained in involving her so late.

_Stupid_ Eli.

Rikki caught herself grinning at the thick of her coffee from thinking of him. Elijah Bradley was the only real "consistent" in her life since she wound up in this world. And... well, yeah, she did sort of stalk him online, through school, and at his house, but that was just following up a lead, getting close to the one person who could bring her some congress with her life's north star: Captain America. Rikki hadn't _planned_ on liking Eli. It didn't start out that way. But now?

"But now...?" Rikki sighed. "But now... Kate Bishop..."

_Don't even go there, Rebecca Barnes!_ She chided herself. _The hell's wrong with me? One of my only friends in this spaced-out world is laid up in bed and all I can think about is drama. Jeez!_

She was gazing at the empty base of her foam cup when Rikki finally got her head together. She tossed it into a waste bin across the corridor and doubled back to Teddy's room.

He was asleep, as he had been since she came here and exchanged watch duty with Eli and the others. He also looked a little more comfortable than before, probably from the stronger dose of painkillers the last nurse brought in, but that was a good thing. If he was, as Tommy had told her, half-Skrull, he'd be back on his feet by morning, as long as he had the proper rest.

With Teddy sleeping there really wasn't much for Rikki to do, so she occupied her time with homework, speed-read a few mags, and cycled through every single song her MP3 player could contain. An hour later Teddy was still asleep and she was still bored out of her freaking skull.

So Rikki turned on the TV.

It was a tiny flat screen fixed into the opposing wall with about sixty bucks of credit on it (courtesy of Kate) and if Teddy wasn't going to use it, Rikki certainly was. With its little remote in hand she flicked through the channels and spied each show.

"Cookery..." she clicked the clicker. "Reality dweebs..." (click) "basketball..." (click) "senate hearing..." (click) "reality dweebs..." (click) "sitcom..." (click) "reality dweebs on the beach..." (click) and then a pause. "...! News conference?"

So it was.

It was the H.A.M.M.E.R logo emblazoned on the speaker's podium that caught her eye first. There was some kind of junket. You might've considered the hall it was being held in sparsely furnished if not for all the cameramen, boom operators, journalists and photographers. The podium stood before a pool of reporters, half of which were seated (in a phalanx of cheap aluminium chairs) while the other half gathered before the camera crews around the fringes of the room. There were a few light murmurs before a slickly dressed woman with dark hair and a red fringe sauntered up to the podium and took her place behind the microphone.

A screen graphic identified her as "Victoria Hand".

"What the hell is this?" Rikki asked.

The television displayed Victoria softly clearing her throat as she began her address of the assemblage. _"First of all I'd just like to thank you all for coming at such short notice, and I would like to confirm from, uh... the get-go, that, I will be taking questions after this, um... this statement I'm about to make."_

She mulled over her notes.

"_...Well... first I'd... like to stress that the summary investigation concerning the recent incident at Wakefield was conducted in conjunction with the New York Police Department and the FBI, and I will further clarify some of the specifics about the incident."_

Rikki watched Victoria Hand pause and cough, suck in her lips and lean forward; little flecks of body language that told the girl she was about to hear a flaming hot pack of lies.

"_From what our investigation was able to determine, this was both a drug and mutant-related incident. The Wakefield warehouse at which this 'event' occurred was a known hub of drug-related trade and we have good reason to suspect that the mutant currently under H.A.M.M.E.R's detention, the mutant arrested at the scene, was a focal participant in the trade of speedbang, the cocaine and Mutant Growth Hormone compound that has come to a certain level of prominence in recent years."_

Rikki sneered. "Bull!"

"_This young mutant,"_ Victoria continued. _"violently resisted arrest and is being held under H.A.M.M.E.R's jurisdiction until we can confirm that this person is a danger to neither themselves nor those in their vicinity. Should we come to such a consensus then this mutant will be transferred to police custody. I would just like to... assure the public at large that we have the situation under control, and that we are taking the most... necessary and appropriate steps to deal with this incident as befits its... rather sensitive nature. With that said I would be happy to open the floor to questions."_

There was something of a media scrum after Victoria Hand said that, with the reporter horde all frantically throwing up their arms and calling on her to call on _them_. The H.A.M.M.E.R operative perused the thrum and pointed out a thin looking dude to the upper left. He stood up gleefully with a mic and a cue card, representing the Huffington Post.

"_Thank you, Miss Hand," _he said. _"I just have, um, a couple of questions. In H.A.M.M.E.R's initial statement concerning the Wakefield incident, we were told that... Norman Osborn would himself conduct this current... uh, press junket, so I'd like to ask; does his lack of participation have anything to do with his forthcoming response to the recent Asgardian violence at Soldier Field?" _

Victoria sighed as the reporter sat back down. Obviously that was a sensitive question -- as it was intended to be. _"Well, um... I'd... I would say, that, I am not in any position to discuss Director Osborn's administrative business at this point in time, but... I can assure you that H.A.M.M.E.R as a whole takes the recent events in Chicago with the utmost seriousness. Next question, please."_

Rikki watched the journalists flip out again. Victoria picked out another, this time from the lower right, some forty-something bleached-blonde representing Fox News.

"_Thank you, Miss Hand,"_ she said. _"On the subject of the mutant. Some members of the public and even certain US representatives are calling the attack at Wakefield an act of Mutant Terrorism. Does H.A.M.M.E.R regard it as such? And has H.A.M.M.E.R contacted Utopia about its failure to release an official public statement concerning the issue? Thank you."_

"_Yes, well, look..." _Victoria prattled on as the Fox News reporter sat down. _"Um, while the recent drug/mutant violence in Wakefield is... troubling to us all, and as I said we are taking the most appropriate steps in handling the incident, I would... caution against dubbing this an __**act of terrorism**__. We have here a child with tremendous power whose participation in drug-related violence should preclude no public reprimand, but... all the same, we haven't had any indication that this violence is in any way politically-minded. And with regards to Utopia? No, we haven't seen a public statement yet but informally I know that Utopian officials have denied that this incident even __**involved**__ a mutant, so I'm afraid that is something you'll have to take up with Utopia itself. Next question?"_

Another scrum, another selection, another news agency. CNN this time. That particular reporter stood up, thanked Victoria for picking him, then went on to ask, _"Within the blogosphere there have been, shall we say, 'whispers' that the incident in Wakefield involved the so-called 'Young Avengers'. Is this mere speculation or has H.A.M.M.E.R's investigation corroborated this and, if so, how will you handle them from here on out?"_

Rikki paid more attention to that question.

"_Okay, um..."_ Victoria dragged a tress out of eye before she continued. _"In response to that I must first remind you that, uh... in lieu of... certain legal restrictions, I am... I-I'm not at liberty to actually __**discuss**__ our captive's uh... identity. What I can say is that... the Superhuman Registration Act is still in effect. Although these kids mean well, I warn them that superheroism bares certain responsibilities that hold you accountable before both the law and the public at large. H.A.M.M.E.R would like for them to continue to serve the great city of New York, __**but within the proper parameters**__, so I would urge them to register, gain the proper training that the Fifty-State Initiative can offer, and then they can return to this city fully equipped with government sanction and H.A.M.M.E.R's unyielding support. Thank you, that will be all."_

Rikki, seething, shut the television off the second Victoria Hand stepped down. She knew she was going to hear some lies from H.A.M.M.E.R but she was completely stunned by the _number_ of them. What a crock! From what Eli told her, those H.A.M.M.E.R agents who collared the Young Avengers (after Wiccan flipped to smackdown mode) actually let them go. If they still gave a damn about registration then why didn't they bust them there and then? What was H.A.M.M.E.R's game in all of this? What were they up to?

When Rikki leaned over to put down the remote she found that she wasn't the only one asking herself that question. Teddy was wide awake now, and from that angry look on his face, he'd heard everything the press conference had to offer.

**********

_???_

_Memories on top of memories. _

_It's not the most perfect way to sum up what I'm going through but when you spend half the morning wracking your brain trying to figure out just why in the hell the world seems to be so freaking... upside down... _

_"Memories on top of memories" was the best I could do._

_I didn't get it._

_Take my eldest little brother's bike for example. I tracked around to where my Mom (who I don't question for a second is my Mom) said the garage is. I find my bike there and its my brother's. I recognize it. I recognize the spokes, the chains, the b-ball stickers stuck to the seat; that's my little brother's bike. And yet it wasn't._

_The finish is navy blue. Why do I have this voice in the corner of my skull telling me that my little brother doesn't like that colour? The seat's stickers rep for Oklahoma City Thunder. Why do I have this voice in the corner of my skull telling me that it should've been the New York Knicks?_

_New York._

_Even as I cycled to school with Sylvie tightly sat behind me, with her giving me directions and me stupidly gawking at sights a native of Broxton probably never would've, my mind kept cycling back to that grand spired city. I rode through Broxton dirt tracks dreaming of a New York City street. Car horns pounding along the logjam. The scent of gasoline, falafels, and lattes wafting from a street corner. Ant colonies of plebs marching up and down the sidewalk with coffee in one hand and briefcases in the other. Some beautiful blonde boy texting me mid-ride:_

"_I love u."_

_I was so involved in the fantasy I didn't realize that Sylvie and I already made it to school, not until she tipped my shoulder and pointed over at the bike shed. Kind of a crappy bike shed too. Just some iron and plywood. Then I glanced over my shoulder, past the school gates, over the terraces, and do you know what I saw?_

_Corn fields. _

_Yeah, that's right. You heard me. Corn fields. I mean, come on! Corn fields? Something about that, about me seeing it, __**just wasn't right**__. I knew it my heart that I was a New Yorker -- even more than the magazine of the same name. But on top of those NYC yearnings of mine, dense and molasses-thick, I had other memories. Visions of teaching my little brother to ride down Digby's hill past the old abandoned cornhusker's house, of camping with my Dad (who hardly seemed 'outdoorsy') by the creek and hiking up the forest trail with my Boy Scout group when I was a kid myself. _

_Memories on top of memories. _

_It was like there were two Billy Kaplans. There was New York Billy, the one who knew he didn't belong in Broxton and who couldn't stop picturing some guy with hair as blonde as the corn he kept obsessing over; and there was Broxton Billy, who had his own faint but recognizable memories. There was a kind of civil war going on between the two -- but Broxton Billy had an edge that New York Billy didn't. They were both here, in Broxton, not New York -- neither the city nor the state. This was Oklahoma __**for sure**__. But there was a lynchpin, someone who both Billys seemed familiar with. _

_Sylvie. _

_I watched her climb off my bike and hand me her pink helmet like I knew what to do with it. Both New York Billy and Broxton Billy seemed to care about her but one of them was... a little mistrustful of her. Why? I couldn't say. She's nice to me and all, but..._

_I get this feeling that Sylvie's part of the reason I feel like I've been ripped between two cities. _

_So yeah. There's a kind of disassociation going on here. I don't know if I'm going out of my mind; if this is a dream or the Twilight Zone; but something's not right. _

_I tried to put my weirdness to the back of my mind as Sylvie nudged open the doors for me. I followed my timetable and she shared all of my classes, so by lunch I was looking for any excuse to just be on my own for a little while. I kinda found it when Sylvie skipped off to those cheerleader tryout she was talking about this morning. As guilty as I felt when I thought it, I was a little glad to be rid of her for the hour. _

_The lunchroom was a greasy mess and totally segregated - cheerleaders with cheerleaders, jocks with jocks, nerds with nerds. The whole place just reeked of corn and lard. So when I took a tray over to the lunch line I snagged the crappiest excuse for a garden salad I could find and made my way out. There was a hillock overlooking the football field and I went to it. I sort of noticed it on my bike ride up here but I didn't ask Sylvie any questions about it, and I wasn't entirely sure I was allowed to eat out here, but New York Billy didn't like it in the cafeteria and Broxton Billy didn't have the energy to argue with him anymore. _

_I parked myself under the cascading shadow of an oak tree on the hill. The ten yard line ran just a couple yards south of me while a couple of football players threw some pigskin at each other by the bleachers. They were surprisingly quiet. _

_It was peaceful._

_The grass had that freshly cut smell to it. Fluffy pillow-shaped clouds drifted across the bluest sky I'd ever seen. The day was warm but cooled by a light breeze, gentle enough to wave my fringe, and soothing. For the first time I appreciated Broxton. _

_So there I was, running my plastic fork through a salad, enjoying the climate a little, forgetting for a moment that I seemed to be going insane, when that football flew at my face. If I didn't hear someone yell "duck!" it would've smacked me six hours south of Stillwater, but I was quick enough to watch it bounce off the oak tree and land "plop" into my food._

"_Damn!" _

_And then __**he**__ came._

_He was a linebacker (don't ask me how I know that) but out of uniform, his sun-bronzed muscles just swept over by a sleeveless green jersey and shorts. I crawled up inside myself, nervous and breathless, suddenly self-conscious, when a hand so much stronger than mine took the football out of my lunch. I heard him chuckle._

"_Hey," His voice was as tender as it was powerful, if you can understand it. I certainly didn't -- but I knew that I liked it. "You okay? D'you get hit?"_

_It was him._

_I didn't know if anything to do with those lush sapphires he called eyes, or the way the wind caressed his hair, or his make-you-wanna-smile-too grin, but I knew this was the guy I kept picturing. Broxton Billy was half-afraid he'd get beaten up. New York Billy was half-ready to cream himself. _

"_No," I swept the bangs out of my eyes, trying to stay cool, trying not to look like a nerdtastic goofball in front of this boy. "I-I-I'm fine, thanks."_

"_Have we met? You look kinda familiar."_

_Why is my heart beating so hard? _

"_No. No, I don't think so." I said. _

"_Oh. Okay. Well," He offered me his hand. "I'm Teddy."_

_Teddy..._

_New York Billy yearned inside me when my put my hand in his. His grip was so strong and yet his skin so warm and soft that the combination left me gooey. I caught myself repeating his name in my mind, "Teddy", even though I was trying not to look like a total douchebag in front of him and failing hopelessly... or at least I thought I was._

_He was kind enough to smile at me._

"_Do you have a name?" He asked. _

_Stupid, stupid, stupid Billy! Tell him your name!_

"_It's Billy," I tried to chuckle off my embarrassment. "Billy Kaplan."_

_I watched him smile again. "Nice to meet you, Billy. And, sorry for screwing up your lunch like that. I could buy you a slice afterschool to make up for it, you know, if you want."_

_I was so into him I didn't notice Sylvie coming._

"_Sure," I said. "That'd be great..."_

_He smiled once more, for the last time this time, said goodbye to me, and hurled the pigskin oval back down to the football field. He (and all his hotness) jogged off and left me quivering in his wake. _

**********

Avengers Mansion, Manhattan; New York City

Patriot slowly twisted the cap off a soda and drank his way through Stature's recount of her exploits with Hank Pym's Avengers (since that whole fake Scarlet Witch mess). He wasn't uninterested or anything, just preoccupied with Billy -- or rather what extremes he might have to put his team through to save him. With Teddy holed up in hospital (and Rikki guarding him) they were two men down and facing one of the most dangerous organizations in the world. He had to hope that it wouldn't come to that, that they might find something concrete to justify Billy's actions and broker his release, but once again that skull-wringing voice of logic warned him against that kind of simplicity. No matter how hard Patriot tried he couldn't shake that ominous inkling. Maybe it was an after-effect of his abilities; super paranoia.

The team leader quietly watched Hawkeye and Stature discuss everything she'd been up to since they last met up like this. Next to him sat an equally indifferent Speed who tried his damnedest to act like he wasn't worried about his brother (but any fool with a pulse could see that he was).

Then silence fell when The Vision phased through the decimated mansion wall and took a chair next to Stature.

The Young Avengers watched him open his synthetic palm to reveal the runic commitment ring Teddy gave Billy. Its sterling silver still retained a dull glimmer even in the pale light the mansion's back-up generators provided.

"That's the ring?" Stature asked.

Vision nodded. _"Indeed, Cassie. My analysis is complete."_

"So what have we got here?" Asked Kate.

_"At first I thought the answer might lie with the symbols engraved on the ring, which are, as you can see, plainly runic; so I cross-referenced them with every runic script variant I am aware of -- Elder and Younger Futhark, Marcomannic, Anglo-Frisian, Medieval and Dalecarlian -- and detected no coherent transliteration from the read out, so I converted the search to Asgardian runic systems and returned sixteen different transliterations which, in sum, suggest the inscription reads as a kind of declaration of love. The meaning varies between each system, but the consistent word is-" _

"Jonas-" Patriot said. "Get to the point before Tommy falls asleep."

The Vision nodded. _"Apologies, Eli. Upon testing it was clear that the answer did not lie with the ring's symbols; they speak of love, not of any incantation or spell, at least not within my databanks. So I turned my focus to the metal."_

Hawkeye finger-poked the ring. "It's silver, right?"

"_Or so it appears. Yet after conducting a fresh analysis I determined that the substance was not silver at all -- the ring was constructed less than a week ago from a Norn Stone."_

Speed leaned forward. "Okay, not to spam this convo or anything, but what the heck are Norn Stones?"

Vision waved the ring from eye to eye. _"Speaking in the most straightforward manner possible? I don't know, Tommy. My encephalic cache has only one file on the material so it is, for all intense and purposes, a mystery to me. The mineral is Asgardian in origin, I know that much, and I suspect that it affected Billy's behaviour."_

"I knew it," Hawkeye said. "Why else would the ring glow like that?"

Stature tried to get it all straight in his head. "So what you're saying is that this ring is made from something called Norn Stones and that while Billy was wearing it, it made him go nuts?"

"_That, or perhaps..."_ The Vision set the ring down again. _"...perhaps the ring acts as a conduit for someone else's will. Either way, Cassie, I don't doubt that the ring is responsible for Billy's outburst. It is our only variable."_

"So how do we know the thing isn't bugged to spy on us or something?" Asked Patriot.

Hawkeye grinned. "Paranoid much?"

"And what, I shouldn't be? This _proves_ that someone set Billy up. This proves it. What I want to know is why. If it was about registration then there's no way H.A.M.M.E.R would've let us go like that, right? This whole thing was about Billy from the get-go."

Stature sighed, setting her cheek to her fist. "So what's our next move?"

"We find the guy who sold Teddy the ring," Patriot socked his fist. "If he knows something we'll find out and if he's involved we'll deal with him; lets just do it fast. Rikki can't watch Teddy forever."

"Yeah, about that..." Hawkeye began. "Are you sure it was a smart idea to bring someone else into this? What if H.A.M.M.E.R's behind it? Aren't we putting her at risk by involving her?"

The thought of her, Rikki Barnes aka Nomad, brought up Patriot's private grin and those not-so-distant memories of how they first met. She was a lot of things but a weakling she wasn't. "Trust me, Rikki can handle herself."

"We hardly know her."

Patriot's smile fell. "_I_ know her."

He didn't know if it was her expression or those awkward looks Stature and Speed were trying to hide, but somehow Patriot knew that Hawkeye was about to say something he didn't want to hear -- fortunately (or unfortunately, as the case might be) the entire table juddered at the reverberant shockwaves of a crash -- somewhere over their heads. It was like bricks were being smashed.

"What the heck was that?" Asked Stature.

Speed pulled his goggles on. "Lets find out."

While The Vision led the way upstairs Hawkeye and Patriot gathered their weapons to follow. The Young Avengers ran through the ruined lengths of the mansion and exited into the courtyard. Night had fallen and obscured the cracked statues and gates, the rim wall and hedges. An old oak tree, split at the trunk, lay at their door. Patriot shuffled his boots through the pebble-strewn grasses and glanced across the yard at Stature's behest, and he soon found the source of the crash. He found the Young Masters.

Executioner, Big Zero, Egghead, Coat of Arms and Melter; poised beyond the fallen oak tree, enshrouded by the nocturne.

Silence. And then?

Melter made the first move. "We need to talk."

**********

Afterthoughts

* I'm not sure what sport Teddy plays, I think it's basketball, but since American football struck me as more 'rural' I went with that.

* Big thanks to TimeWitch16, Mazy3261, MarkeithL, and Joe for their reviews. I appreciate the feedback and I hope you'll keep reading.


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